


Sharp Tooth and Sweet Dreams

by IndigoDream



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Dreams, Fae & Fairies, Insomnia, M/M, Magnus Bane-centric, Nightmares, Past life, Sickness, Temporary Character Death, description of body horror, human magnus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 07:50:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20404231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoDream/pseuds/IndigoDream
Summary: Magnus doesn't want to sleep. The nightmares keep coming, over and over again. He hates them, hates sleeping. He just wants some peace. When Catarina drags him to a specialist, he starts getting the beginning of an explanation.





	Sharp Tooth and Sweet Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enkelimagnus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enkelimagnus/gifts).

> Hello! 
> 
> This fic started as a way for me to deal with my own relationship to my nightmares and my insomnia, and it developed in the mad thing that it is now. This is very different from my regular writing, and is the first work that mostly involves angst that I've written in a while. Though, I hope you'll all enjoy it! 
> 
> Special thanks to @enkelimagnus, who encouraged me and keeps being an amazing friend with a great (and much better than mine) eye for angst! 
> 
> TW for a death, body horror, and nightmares that involve quite a lot of shouting and violence.
> 
> Enjoy, don't hesitate to comment!

No one ever understands when Magnus says that he doesn’t ever want to sleep. They see the black marks under his eyes and think he needs it, needs meds to force his body to relax. Even his friends don’t realize that his migraine, his sensitivity to the lights, everything that comes with his lack of sleep, he welcomes it gladly. 

Magnus doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t want to confront the world in his head anymore. The real world is so much kinder, so much nicer, such a comfort instead of the terror hidden in his brain. He knows that he is unfair when he refuses help from people. He has never told even Cat or Ragnor about the recurring nightmares. He doesn’t know if they would get it. Even he himself doesn’t really. He refuses to go see a specialist again. His experiences there have been disastrous. He doesn’t care about his sleep pattern, he just wants to get those images out of his head.

How to explain to anyone his nightmares? How to tell to anyone the way his heart clenches and breaks with every hours spent sleeping? 

“Magnus,” Cat says one evening as she came by after her work, and she herself looks tired, “you can’t go on like this.” 

She says it firmly, with her hands folded over her lap. The way he thinks she tells her patients they need an important surgery if they want to make it through the day. She has been waiting, bidding her time until it was the right moment. She is still wearing her scrubs as well, which tells him she came straight from work. Dot must have picked up their daughter from daycare then. 

“I’m fine,” Magnus answers, and he feels the lie in his breaking voice. “I manage just fine.” 

“Please, don’t do this,” she pleads softly, taking his hands. “You can’t stand up today. When was the last time you slept for longer than an hour?” 

She is right that he can’t move much that day. If she didn’t have a key, he would never have been able to open the door for her. The only big moves he did that day was from his bed to the couch, to the bathroom and to the kitchen. He couldn’t even cook, but he is so tired lately he isn’t hungry anymore. He just wants to rest, to forget every little pain in his body, but he can’t. The haunted faces, the drawn out anger his mind conjures at night… He doesn’t want to face them. 

“This can’t go on,” Catarina is saying. “Ragnor, Dot and I, we can’t watch you destroy yourself like this. You need to do something about your sleep. I took you an appointment with one of my friends at the hospital. Isabelle is very good, you’ll see. I’m taking you here now.” 

What? No. That can’t be. Magnus needs time to prepare. He has to put on his make up, at least his eye-liner, and he has to do his hair up properly. He can’t go out like this. He hasn’t had time, or more likely the energy, to put on clean clothes. 

He tries to protest, to move away from the couch and Cat’s hold on his hands, but his friend keeps his hands in her own and looks at him sternly. 

“Ragnor is picking us up in ten minutes. You don’t have a choice this time, Magnus. We are so worried. We can’t let this happen anymore. You aren’t yourself anymore. You don’t go out with us anymore, you didn’t even come to see Madzie’s dance recital despite promising you would… You were fired from your job. We thought you needed some time on your own to figure it out, but it’s not working, is it? So for once, please, just do this. For me, for Madzie, for everyone who loves you.” 

There are tears spilling over her dark cheeks now, and this is what really startles Magnus. Since he has met her when they were ten, he has rarely seen her cry. There had been the occasional bad break up, the exhaustion that made her angry-cry when she was in med school and they still lived together, but he doesn’t know what to do with this pleading and crying Catarina. She is the strongest person he has ever known, and seeing her like this hurts him much more than any nightmares ever could. 

He squeezes her hand and nods. “Alright. I’ll go see the specialist. If you really think it can help me, I’m willing to do anything.” 

She sighs, relieved, and stands up, helping him do as much. Carefully, she helps him put on a clean sweatpants and a clean shirt, and he insists on throwing over a hoodie despite the heat outside. He is already dizzy from moving so much, but she stays by his side, a crutch for him to hold onto. 

When Ragnor arrives, Magnus is dressed cleanly and leaning against the pillows of his couch. The effort exhausted him, but he isn’t giving up. He will show to his friends that he can do this, if only to reassure them. The older man pats Magnus’ shoulder lightly and, with Catarina, takes him to the car downstairs. The drive to the hospital is quiet. Catarina doesn’t let go of Magnus’ hand, and he doesn’t know whether it’s to reassure him or herself. 

Magnus doesn’t like hospitals, despite having gone there a good number of times, mostly to pick up Cat when she was still a student, or after too wild nights when either one of his friends or himself did something incredibly dumb. There is always an air of death and sickness, even if he knows how clean they are. He has never understood how Cat could have chosen to do this. He admires her dedication to help people, but this environment that brings all the sick of the world all together… It sickens him as well. 

Cat leads him through the hospital gently but firmly. Her head nods regularly to nurses she knows and other doctors, but her focus remains steadily on him. He has missed her, he thinks. Since she got married to Dot and they adopted Madzie three years ago, she has been less present in his own life, which he knows is unfair of him for holding that against her. He is happy for her, glad that she has started her own family, with the woman she loves and who loves her just as much. But there is an ugly part of himself that wishes she had kept mothering him, taking care of him each time he would spiral. He knows it’s not fair. 

“I’ll take him from there,” a young woman, maybe in her late 20s, is suddenly in front of them, and Magnus snaps out of his thoughts. 

The woman is beautiful, with long hair braided in an elegant bun and eyes a startling shade of brown. It reminds Magnus of something, but he can’t focus long enough on the thought to remember what. It feels slippery, like something is stopping him from fully remembering it. She is ethereal, with a jawline sculpted in marble, and her presence feels like staring at the sun. Magnus doesn’t know how she does this, what it is about her that is so special, but when her eyes zero in on him, he feels both the most insignificant man on earth and the luckiest person alive. 

“Isabelle,” Cat says with a small smile. “Sorry we are a bit late—“ 

“Don’t worry,” the woman reassures with a smile and pats Magnus’ friend’s shoulder. “I ran late with my last patient, and I was coming down to see if you were waiting for me.” 

As the two women chats, Magnus takes the time to gather his thoughts. The woman is a doctor, some kind of sleep specialist, and he’ll have to carefully stay on the edge of sane so that she doesn’t intern him in the hospital. They would force him to sleep here. 

“Magnus?” Cat’s voice seems far away. “Isabelle is going to take you to her office, alright? I’ll be waiting downstairs when you are done. Dot and Madzie are waiting for us to have dinner after.” 

Lightly, in a motherly gesture, she kisses his cheek and squeezes his hand before letting go. When her hand leaves his, he has a moment of unfathomable fear, a deep gash that opens up in his chest and cries out. He doesn’t know why, but he can’t allow himself to be alone with Isabelle. He is afraid of what it will do to him. But, as quickly as the feeling washed over him, he feels secure again. 

“Shall we go then?” The doctor says lightly, the smile on her face pleasant and reassuring, and he nods. 

He follows her through the corridors until they reach an office, sparsely decorated with a large couch that looks more comfortable than anything Magnus has every seen before, and a desk. She indicates the couch to him, telling him to go sit while she grabs her notepad.

“So, why don’t you tell me why you think you are here?” She asks as she opens her pen. 

That’s it? That’s such a simple question. “My friend Catarina believes I have troubles sleeping.” 

“And what do you think about that?” 

“I don’t sleep as much as I wish I could, but there isn’t any other solutions, since—“ he stops himself, his hands gripping his elbows tightly. He hadn’t meant to say this, hadn’t meant to tell the truth. He had wanted to say the same thing he told everyone: he is doing just fine, sleeping enough and just needing a nap to get through the day. Somehow, his words had changed in his mouth to tell the honest truth he has been wanting to say all this time. 

“Since what?” She questions, putting down her pen and looking at him intently. What is it about her eyes that tug something at his chest? 

“Since the nightmares are always there. I can’t escape them each time I fall asleep, and I don’t want to see them again, I just want to sleep without a dream or a nightmare again, but I never can, so I just don’t sleep. It seems easier at this point.”

“You have nightmares every time you fall asleep?” When he nods, she continues. “Tell me about those dreams then.” 

Compelled by her voice, he does. Every memory of the nightmares, every little details, he tells. 

There is a man in his dreams, always hauntingly beautiful, with hazel eyes that always start enchantingly attracting. He calls out to Magnus as he stands in a red fog that strangles him, calls for his help. Whenever Magnus can reach him, the man is hollow, a shadow of a person. But when Magnus can’t… It’s then that the real nightmares start. 

Slowly, the face of the man turns to anger, completely distorted by the rage. All the beauty from before is hidden behind the snarl that has the man’s eyes shine with evil intentions. His screams are more and more aggressive, his yells of Magnus’ name an unstoppable force that pierce and slash at Magnus. But the worst happens near the end. When the anger has melted, when there is only terrified desperation as the fog tightens and Magnus can’t reach him anymore. The shrieks and agony will always stay with Magnus. It is not just pain anymore, it is a pure, unbending agony that shakes the man and carries through his voice. Magnus always manages to find him by the end, but there is nothing more than a melting face contorted in pain that slowly morphs into rotten flesh that falls of bones. 

Magnus is shaking by the time he has stopped telling his nightmares. There aren’t many variants, so the constant reruns of the scenes re what terrifies him the most. He can never really save the other man. He always dies, and Magnus is always left alone. What scares him the most is how real it feels every time he wakes up. 

“Can you tell me what the man looks like,” Isabelle asks, writing down notes in her notepad. She speaks on an even tone, as if what Magnus just said is boringly mundane and she has heard this a thousand times before. There is nothing about her attitude that tells him she is even slightly surprised. 

It’s only when he describes the man in details that he detects a hint of unease about her. It’s as if she knows this man, as if she has seen him as well and knows exactly what he is talking about. She moves back and grabs something in her desk. He can tell it’s a photograph, but until she extends it to him, he doesn’t realize what it is. 

The man from his nightmares is on it, smiling widely while wearing a dark suit with a grey shirt underneath. He is even handsomer than in Magnus’ nightmares, but he feels uneasy seeing him like this. The man has an arm around Isabelle, and it’s then that it strikes Magnus. The doctor and the man looks hauntingly similar. They have the same high cheekbones, the same dark locks and, though different shades, their eyes have the sharpness of a predator eyeing its next dinner. Even if they are both smiling at the camera, they are intense and all encompassing. Magnus can’t tell what the background is, because all of his focus is pulled to the two people in the center. 

“I think you must have met my brother,” Isabelle says gently, and her voice sounds soft and truthful. She sounds so peaceful he feels some infiltrate him as well. “And something must have scared you right before, or right after, so you associated his face to the negative memory, and now you see him in your nightmares. But it’s nothing you can’t fight, Magnus. You need to sleep, if you want the nightmare to go away. If you keep being afraid of it, you’ll never recover from it. You need to face it head on.”

What she is saying makes sense, but he doesn’t understand it either way. He is sure he has never met her brother. He would remember a man like this, because, were it not for the nightmares, it would be exactly the type of man Magnus would run after and fall head over heels in love with. Even with the nightmares, there is something about him that begs to be loved, to be adored and cherished. Maybe it’s in the way he cries out Magnus’ name, that desperation and longing in his voice… 

Regardless, Magnus doesn’t know if he can face the man head on. Magnus is no coward, but just the thought of the nightmare sends shivers down his body. 

“Magnus,” Isabelle says gently again, and he feels appeased again. She has an amazing effect on him, and he wonders why before she starts speaking again. “You can’t let your fear control you, alright? Catarina tells me you are an amazing man, with a lot of strength. Don’t you want to prove your friend right? She brought you here only because she is worried for you.”

He thinks about what she says for a few moments, and she doesn’t add anything else. Again, he feels as if there is something deeply unnerving about her, something he can’t figure out. It tugs out at his consciousness, like he is missing something obvious and right in front of him. 

“Alright,” he says quietly and looks straight at her. “What should I do then?” 

“First, I’m going to prescribe something to you, so you can fall asleep tonight. Even if you have decided to sleep, your body is unaccustomed to this new rhythm and won’t cooperate immediately. Then, we’ll see if you need more appointment with me, alright? I’ll put you under medication for a week to start. It would be best if you could have someone stay with you, or stay with someone throughout the week.” 

She keeps explaining things to him and he nods numbly. He didn’t want medication. He didn’t want to sleep. But now, he finds himself wishing he could just sleep right away. Strangely, he has the certitude his nightmares won’t be as terrifying as they had been before. 

After that, she walks him back to Catarina and Ragnor, and they all go to Catarina’s house. Dinner goes by quickly, and then Magnus is marched to the guest bedroom and given his medicament by a serious faced Cat. She hugs him tightly and he feels like a child lectured by his mother. It feels strangely good. He falls asleep easily after that, despite his fear and anxiety. 

The man is waiting in his dream. There is no fog though, no blood or anguished cries. Just him, sitting on a wooden ground and looking peaceful. His eyes are close and he looks as if he is meditating. It feels oddly private, and Magnus feels almost bad for being here. But this is /his/ dream, after all. If there is an intruder here, it’s the other man. 

“You are Isabelle’s brother.” It’s the first time Magnus can speak in one of his nightmares. It feels oddly real though. “Why are you here?” 

The man startles a bit when Magnus’ voice resonates in the empty space. He opens his eyes and their hazel shade is still as beautiful as ever. He looks surprised, for the first time showing an other expression than anguish or anger. His beauty is highlighted by this. 

“Alexander,” he says a bit hoarsely. At Magnus’ questioning look, he adds, “My name. It’s Alexander.” 

Magnus feels a bit silly. He should know this. It’s his dream, after all. But the name is a revelation, an illumination in the dark chamber of his dreams. It fits the man perfectly. 

“That doesn’t answer my question.” 

Magnus sits opposite the man and looks at him square in the eyes. He is more rested now than he has been in the last years. A hint of vanity overtakes him as he wishes that his dream appearance is looking better than what Isabelle had seen; there is this odd need to please Alexander in his chest. He wants the other man to want him, to desire him and cherish him, the way Magnus know he is doomed to do for Alexander. 

“No, it doesn’t,” Alexander answers with a shrug. He is not surprised anymore. His eyes meet Magnus, and it sends a chill down the dreaming man’s spine. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s more important that you know why you are here.” 

“Why am I here then?” Magnus tries to be defiant, tries to lift his chin up and cross his arms, but he can’t move. He is hypnotized by Alexander. If he had thought Isabelle was fascinating, Alexander is so much more entrancing. Forget the sun, this is like staring into a whole galaxy. 

“Because you wanted an escape. You wanted something more than your boring little life, with your great friends and their kids…” Magnus doesn’t move, and he could swear Alexander doesn’t either, but his voice comes from everywhere at the same time, caressing Magnus’ skin. “You wanted an adventure. You wanted to be whisked away and to never return.” 

“That’s not true,” Magnus tries to protest, but the lie falls flat. He has always wanted more than he had. He has always felt like there was something lacking in his life. He dreamed of someone stealing him away during the night, taking him on an amazing journey. But how could Alexander know this? 

“You told me so though, many years ago. You begged me to take you with me, to bring you into my world.”

Magnus remembers then. It wasn’t here in this dreams, or in this life. It had been before, long before he was Magnus, when he had been someone else entirely. When his friends had been different, when his life had been different… It aches to remember this. He knows he shouldn’t, has the innate knowledge remembering should not be possible. But Alec, because he remembers his names now, all of them, is bending the law of the universe for him. For them. 

“Why the nightmares? Why did you plague me with your death, over and over? You could have just come… I had always been waiting for you…” Magnus’ voice is pleading and desperate, and his whole body tilts towards Alec. He falls into the other man’s arms, and instead of the cold emptiness he had been half expecting, he is met with muscles and bones. This is the warmth he has always ached for, the body he has always longed to touch again. He starts sobbing then. 

It breaks down fully inside of him, this impetuous river of emotions that he had been holding back. It crashes loudly and his sobs get louder and louder. Anger and pain mix in with relief and desperation as he thumps against Alec’s chest. His mouth moves, but he doesn’t know what he is saying. Alexander doesn’t say anything back, holds him simply. 

“Will you come with me now?” He asks this when Magnus has calmed down somewhat, and is cuddled against his chest. He has a hand in the man’s hair, playing with it in a clearly familiar gesture. “I promise, there will be no more nightmares. You will be with me, with my family, and I’ll be yours. Anything you want, I will give it to you. You won’t ever need for anything in your life ever again. You just have to say yes, Magnus.” 

There are flowers blooming around them now, and Magnus is sure this is not the place of a dream anymore. This is theirs for now, but soon the world will ask for it back, and he will lose Alexander forever. If he doesn’t go now, he will never see him again, be it in this life or the next. His life will be empty and cold. So he nods. 

“Yes,” he whispers softly, and Alec’s face becomes brighter than any star. He leans down, and his lips are featherlight when he kisses Magnus. The tenderness of the kiss is unparalleled, and Magnus forgets himself, forgets everything but Alexander’s lips.

In the morning, Cat will scream as she discovers the lifeless body of her best friend. The smile that stretches on Magnus’ lips and his peacefulness will do nothing to soften the agony of his friends. 

Magnus’ funeral is a somber affair, with little people he truly cared about. In the back, where mist and trees blur the background, three figures stand together. Two of them are holding hands, exchanging looks of pure adoration every few minutes, and the third has a satisfied smile on her face. 

Isabelle walks away with her brother and Magnus at the end, back to the woods where they belong. Fae rarely mix with humans voluntarily, and she had only done it for Alec. Now that it is over, she can go back to her own lover.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I might post a companion piece from the Lightwoods perspective, with a bit more of a focus on Izzy as well! 
> 
> If you all want to hear more about this, have questions or anything, I would be delighted to answer on tumblr at @saltytransmalec, which is my personal and writing sideblog!


End file.
